Many smartphones and other computing devices include functionality for notifying users of incoming telephone calls, emails, text messages, and other communications. For example, a typical smartphone can display notification of receipt of a text message. The notification can indicate the sender and the content of the message. The user can then interact with the presented notification to thereby open an interface for responding to the received communication.
Notifications can be beneficial to users, because the user is notified of a communication that may need immediate attention. However, oftentimes the user is interrupted by notifications of communications that do not require immediate attention. In such instances, the notification can be highly distracting and divert attention from other tasks. A user may optionally disable notifications when he or she is busy with another task, but this is another inconvenience and the user may forget to do so. In view of these difficulties, there is a need for improved techniques for managing notifications.